


Empty Gut

by CornflowerBlue (DayDaDahlias)



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Brokeback Mountain, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Angst, Bull Rider Calum, Character Death, Country Twang, Cowboy Hats, Denial of Feelings, Gay Cowboy Yearning, Horseback Riding, Internalized Homophobia, It's real artsy in some parts, M/M, Nature, Non-Graphic Smut, One Shot, Pain, Period-Typical Homophobia, Secret Relationship, Smut, This is just supposed to hurt you, This is literally brokeback mountain but with Cashton, like that's what it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:55:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29287923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DayDaDahlias/pseuds/CornflowerBlue
Summary: Cowboys and horses and long, lonely nights in the wilderness.
Relationships: Calum Hood/Ashton Irwin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	Empty Gut

**Author's Note:**

> I started this Saturday night and finished Sunday afternoon because there is simply no better writing motivator than procrastinating other work. 
> 
> This is far more heavily based on the [short story](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/10/13/brokeback-mountain) of Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx as opposed to the movie, and there's a line here and there to pay homage to the story, so if you've read it you can look out for those! 
> 
> Special thanks to [Noah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadedperspective/pseuds/jadedperspective) for proofreading this and being just as bothered by the lack of lube as I am. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy the gay cowboy yearning!

Ashton’s got his cigarette balanced in the corner of his mouth while he’s stirring a pot of beans with a dirty spoon over the fire, heels of his ropers digging into the dirty ground beneath him, and he knows he should be focusing on dinner, but his eyes are trained on the river where Calum is submerged to his ribs while rubbing hands through sopping hair. 

He doesn’t know much about Calum yet, except for the fact that he’s on the mountain for the same reasons Ashton is; nowhere else was offering work and he knows how to ride horses. In fact, the story goes that he wants to ride bulls for a living when he goes back home. 

Ashton thinks it’s plain dumb because he’s never met a bull rider in his life who hasn’t broken at least one leg and one arm, usually at the same time. It’s dirty work, and it’s dangerous, and pointless if you ask him, but if you ask Calum—which Ashton did, the first night after they were granted the job and had done introductions at a bar a few minutes away of the trailer office they signed in—it’s thrilling, and it’s bloody and that gives it charm. 

“Makes you feel _alive_. Y’ever been near death? Really near it? God, there’s nothing like riding that line,” Calum had said around the rim of his Strohs that night, half drunk and getting drunker. 

Another thing Ashton now knows about Calum; he drinks like he’s dying and loves the feel of going numb. 

But he can’t bull ride yet because he hasn’t had the opportunity so he’s spending the cold summer working up here, on Brokeback Mountain with Ashton, in charge of Joe Aguirre’s sheep herd. Ashton thought it was going to be more hassle than it is, staying long months up here with some bastard he’s never known before, but Calum’s alright. 

And besides, Aguirre told Calum to sleep up on the bend with the sheep, tending to them throughout the day, so they really don’t even see each other that often in the grand scheme. 

Only five hours or so, if that, out of a twenty four hour day. 

They’re seeing each other now, though, Ashton working on dinner while Calum works on scrubbing the stench of sheep and coyote blood off his body. 

He had said when he walked into camp an hour ago that he’d shot a big one last night, with balls the size of oranges, and Ashton had laughed and asked him not to bother with the details. 

Calum’s got broad shoulders and smooth skin, his fingers tracing the line of his collarbone as he brushes water off himself, shaking his head and hair out. 

Ashton shouldn’t be looking, and he knows that, but he’s letting his eyes trace the muscles in Calum’s back, the way they flex when he stretches, raises his arms, dunks under the clear water only to return to the surface a second later, gasping for breath, grinning in shock at how cold the water must be. 

When he finally emerges from the river, Ashton knows for sure that he should be diverting his eyes, but he stays staring, watching Calum climb onto the bank, shaking his hair out like how a dog does, spraying droplets, padding across the dirt on bare feet. 

Yep. He’s good looking. Ashton should stop staring. 

“God, it’s cold as shit,” Calum declares when he walks over, pants tugged on but sagging, belt undone, his shirt laid over his shoulder. “You been in?”

“Not recently,” Ashton answers. He’s due for a bath; he smells like horse, hay, and beans. 

Calum grunts as means of response, hobbling his way to the log they set up camp near so they can lean against it while they eat dinner, shivering with the cold water that continues to glisten on his torso, running down the planes of a tan stomach.

Ashton wets his lips subconsciously. “So uh, all good up there?”

“Good?” Calum repeats as he sits through a snort. “It’s fucking terrible.”

Ashton huffs a laugh. 

“I get no goddamn sleep ‘cause I’m up the entire night making sure no one’s running off or getting bit or getting eat. And the damn pup tent smells like piss and it’s cold as shit up there, and it doesn’t make sense that I have to sleep up there in the first place!” Calum laments and Ashton finds himself smiling. 

He jokes, “tell me how you really feel, Cal” which elicits a rough cough and a roll of the eyes. 

“All I’m saying is,” he prompts, “it don’t make sense. We should both be here in camp. Not fair that I have to be up there all by my goddamn self.”

He gestures a hand to the mountain and Ashton once again finds himself wetting his lips without thinking about it. He says, “I wouldn’t mind staying up there a night if you wanna trade; I don’t mind it, seriously.” 

“No, I mean—” Calum pauses before shaking his head— “I don’t mind doing the work either; I’m just saying it doesn't make sense.”

“I’d be happy to go up there tonight,” Ashton repeats, stirring at the beans. “Wouldn’t be a hassle to me.”

“You trying to say you’d do my job better than I do it?” Calum asks him, raising his brows in a challenge and from most men it would probably seem close to a threat, but Calum can’t stop smiling for too long at a time, and Ashton knows it’s joking. 

Ashton takes the pot off the fire to serve it back into its cans, passing one over to Calum who takes it, still shirtless and sitting on the log. 

Ashton says, smiling, “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Calum scoffs up at him. “Unbelievable.”

Ashton flashes him a wink as he sits down on the grass cross-legged, can of beans in his lap. He takes his cigarette out of mouth and moves to stub it out against the flat ground so he can eat his beans. 

Calum is quick to stop him, however, by saying, “hold on just a minute now, you’re not gonna waste that fag are you?”

Ashton glances from him to the smoke in his hand and says, “I’m ‘bout to eat; I don’t have a place for it. Besides, we got plenty more and the supply guy is set to bring more in come Monday.”

“It’s a damn waste is what it is,” Calum argues, gesturing with his hand for Ashton to give it over. “Here, I’ll get use of it.”

Ashton doesn’t hesitate for more than a second, shrugging and lending the smoke over to Calum, who is quick to greedily smoke down the rest of the cigarette that Ashton was sucking himself not two minutes prior. 

Ashton pauses for a moment, taking note of the way Calum’s cheeks hollow and he huffs out smoke through his nostrils, reveling in the grey cloud that envelops him, grinning a second after. He ends up holding his can of beans between his legs, alternating between eating with one hand and smoking with the other. 

“You don’t waste anything where I’m from,” Calum says between a bite and a smoke, towards Ashton. 

Ashton nods along. He understands. 

Calum, as he’s been told, is from a small ranch down in Lightning Flat on the Montana Border, where his daddy rode bulls but didn’t give Calum any of the secrets on how to make a fortune from it, which has left him abandoned on his ass on a mountain with Ashton, herding sheep into a pile, and spending nights alone on the cliff. 

He himself was raised across the state around Sage near the Utah line on a farm of his own, smaller than Calum’s by the sound of it, dealing not in horses and cows but in chickens and dogs until the day his father ran out and a fox got into the coop and ate all the chickens. 

Then his mother moved him and his siblings to a tiny house closer to where Calum had grown up, and she took Ashton out of school to learn how to get a job, and work the land, and herd sheep so he could end up here, with Calum. 

All these tiny choices, tiny moments, lead to one to the next to wind up here; everything to wind up here. 

Calum massages the tension out of own bare shoulder while he smokes, beans gone and empty can abandoned at the side of his boot. 

“Back to what I was complaining about—” Calum carries on and Ashton lets out an audible groan that makes Calum snatch his empty can of beans from the ground and haul it at him, Ashton dodging his head to the side so the can misses him. 

He laughs as he straightens back up. 

“I’m commuting four hours a day,” Calum drones on. “Come in for breakfast, go back to the sheep, evening get ‘em bedded down, come in for supper, go back to the sheep, spend half the night jumping up and checking for coyotes. It doesn’t make any sense that I’m spending the night up there. Aguirre got no right to make me do this.”

Ashton chuckles to himself more quietly and stirs his beans around with a spoon, his food only half eaten, forgotten in favor of watching Calum smoke and grumble about the bad hand he’s been dealt. 

“Like I said,” Ashton tells his beans, “I wouldn’t mind switching with you.”

“I’d take you up on the offer—” Calum smokes— “Except for the fact that I don’t know how to cook for shit so it may hurt us both more than not switching. Would you rather starve or listen to me bitch?”

“Wouldn’t prefer either,” Ashton says. “You know how to open a can?”

Calum looks at him incredulously. “I do have a brain, don’t I?”

“Sometimes I doubt it,” Ashton replies with a grin and Calum scoffs back in his throat, though it’s obvious he’s fighting a smile down. 

“If I had another can,” Calum promises, “I wouldn’t miss this time.”

“Such a flirt,” Ashton teases, fishing out the last of his beans. 

He worries he’s crossed a line by saying it when Calum doesn’t quip anything back before he realizes that Calum is too busy finishing up his cigarette to speak, eyes closed. 

“If you can open a can,” Ashton informs him, “You can cook just as good as I can. D’you wanna switch tonight? Don’t have to but if you’re gonna keep bitching about it, I want you to know you at least have the option to trade.”

Calum snorts, “here. How ‘bout this? You try waking up half the night over coyotes and when you come back down, we’ll see how you feel, huh?”

Ashton shrugs, unfazed. “Doesn’t scare me none. I know how to do my job.”

They spend the rest of the night watching the embers in the fire slowly fizzle and die—like leaves off trees in the winter, like snowflakes melting from earth, everything drizzling into nothing over time, the way love drains away after too many tears on the line—until the only light between them is a kerosene lamp that Ashton hooks to the saddle of his horse to make the trek up the mountain to the pup tent. 

When he comes back in the evening for supper—having stayed up with the sheep through the morning and the afternoon—fighting his way through thin fog, eyes half hung open from a sleepless night, Calum is waiting at camp with a smirk and a fat ‘I told you so’ on his lips. 

Ashton hates that he finds him more attractive when he’s getting cocky, but he says nothing other than, “shut up,” as he splashes his face with warm water. 

“You see what I’m saying now?” Calum asks and Ashton rolls his eyes, agreeing into the wet palms of his hands, that ‘yeah, I see what you’re saying; it’s unfair.’

“You make supper?” he asks as he wipes his hands on his trousers and stands up. 

“Fried potatoes,” Calum answers, and Ashton sits next to him on the log while they eat together, speaking around mouthfuls and making each other laugh about things that shouldn’t be laughed about. 

They talk about lots of things, like the chickens that Ashton’s farm used to have and how he would run around chasing them with the dogs, or drop them off of short heights to see them waft to the ground, clucking and flapping their wings. 

Calum laughs and talks about how he wants to become the most famous bull rider in history, break all his bones at least once, and how after all that, he wants to live in a big old mansion that has butlers and servants, for a long long time and die a wrinkly rich man with young people on his arms.

(Ashton notes that he doesn’t specify women.) 

Ashton thinks it's funny but he doesn’t really want to die an old man because he doesn’t want to die at all. But Calum points out he’ll have to die sometime, so Ashton paints the picture of his future which is just a mountain like this one, on a campsite like this, smoking a cigarette, and feeling the fire on the palms of his hands while he warms himself up. 

“You’re boring as shit,” Calum says as he stands up finally from the log. 

Ashton tilts his head to watch him go. “Am I?”

“Yeah.” Calum picks his way over the dirt to the tent, kicking off his boots. He pauses at the opening. “You not going up to the cliff tonight?”

Ashton realizes then that his eyes are half slid shut and he’s leaning his back against the log, head tilted onto one of his shoulders, falling asleep without his brain even knowing it. He blinks awake for a moment, trying to get his bearings. 

“Uh—” he tries, looking out into the edging darkness of night— “no, not tonight. Too late to go out to the damn sheep tonight.” 

“So what?” Calum asks, popping a hip out in disbelief as he hangs by the tent, looking down at Ashton. “You’re gonna sleep out on the log?”

Ashton nestles into his own neck, eyes drifting shut. “That’s the plan.”

Calum kicks him hard in the boot and Ashton is forced to flinch awake, scowling up at him. Calum says, “you’ll freeze to death out here; it’s better sleeping in the tent.”

“Doubt I’ll feel anything,” Ashton grunts, shifting away from Calum into the dirt.

But he’s human, and the night air works its way across his skin and into his bones, chilling him through to his core to make him shake, curling into himself to try and keep the cold air out to no avail. 

He wakes Calum up with the clattering of his teeth, causing the other man to crawl from the tent with a glare in his eyes that reeks of pity and concern as he beckons with a hand, and a gruff voice, “well c’mon now. Get your ass in here ‘fore you freeze to the ground.”

“This is not…” Ashton fights through shivers as he tries to stand. “ _Weakness_.”

Calum makes a funny face as he lets Ashton into the tent, Ashton hugging onto himself to try and will his veins to pump his blood faster and get circulation back to his fingers and his toes. 

Calum mumbles, “when did I say it was weakness?”

“You didn’t,” Ashton admits, groping at the blanket to get it up and around himself. “But I knew you would be thinking it.”

“I wasn’t,” Calum says quietly after a minute, easing himself onto the mat beside Ashton, their shoulders awkwardly bumping and then apologizing to one another, and then realizing touching wasn’t something they could easily avoid and sinking into it, lying against each other, half on and half off each others torsos, legs slotted between other legs. 

They fall asleep tangled together and they wake up tangled further together an hour or two later, Ashton’s nose touching Calum’s cheek, and he knows he should jerk back, shoot away from the heat Calum’s body provides but he’s so goddamn warm, and Calum’s breath is ghosting on his lips. 

Calum has woken up too, as if sensing that Ashton was awake, and now he’s blinking black eyes at Ashton, continuing to puff small clouds of clear air against Ashton’s mouth and it’s a few seconds before Ashton’s lips lightly part. 

Calum smiles to himself, and from where they are wrapped together, Ashton can feel Calum’s stomach rising and falling against his own. 

Calum’s leg is between his and if they were sleeping, he would have blamed it on the unconscious need to move, but Calum is wide awake so the way that he rubs his thigh against Ashton’s dick cannot be by mistake. 

Ashton takes in a sharp inhale, and when he speaks his voice is hoarse, “don’t you start something you can’t finish.”

Calum’s grin is wide. He prompts, breath against Ashton’s mouth, his nose still against Calum’s cheek, arms trapped between them, legs together, and he teases, “am I starting something? Didn’t realize.”

He does it again, pressing his thigh up between Ashton’s legs harder, and Ashton grits his teeth, reacting before he thinks about it, flipping Calum onto his back and hovering over him, pinning his wrists beside his head. 

Calum looks up at him, shocked before he’s interested, his pupils so big it's hard to distinguish between them and his irises, and his smile hasn’t changed. 

He looks like he’s going to ask a question of Ashton but Ashton doesn’t want to give answers or think about anything, leaning down to press their mouths together, all tongue and hot mouths and breath and Calum moans into him, arching towards his touch. 

“God dammit,” Ashton says, pulling back, his fingers digging into Calum’s wrists, looking over his body and the way that he is shifting beneath Ashton, panting, legs rubbing together, eyebrows angled up like he’s distraught that he can’t do more. Ashton can’t help but smile, as he teases quietly, “You want something?”

Calum bares his teeth, hands balling into fists where Ashton has them trapped. “Fuck you.”

“Maybe if you ask nicely, I will,” Ashton says and he’s half out of breath just at the thought of it. 

At the words, Calum twists beneath him with a groan, doing his best to get free but Ashton continues to hold him down. 

Ashton bends down again and kisses him for a second time and it’s enough to make Calum go slack beneath him and Ashton can’t help but smile, delighted in the control he has over the situation before he removes his lips from Calum’s mouth and chooses to train them down his neck, sucking a mark over his collarbone which makes Calum squirms beneath him. 

He lets out another choked groan as Ashton presses open mouthed kisses to the hollow of his throat. 

“Well, c’mon,” Ashton says against smooth, dark skin. 

“C’mon _what_?” Calum bites and his voice is as strained as the front of his pants are. 

Ashton tilts his head up to look him in the eyes, hovering over him, teeth against his neck. “ _Ask_.”

“Dammit it, Ash.” Calum pushes his head back against the bedroll, a gravelly sound working from his chest up his throat, and he pushes up against Ashton’s hands, and it’s not a question as much as it is a demand when he says, “fuck me.”

Ashton doesn’t need to be told twice and within a matter of minutes he’s dragged Calum onto all fours, fumbled to unbuckle his belt while hauling breath into his lungs by the gallon, digging his fingers into Calum’s waist while Calum gets his own pants around his ankles, and with the help of some clear slick and spit—because there’s nothing else to make it easier—Ashton is inside him, bent over his spine and biting onto his shoulder as he fucks into him. 

There isn’t much sound between them but sharp, stuttering breaths, the slide of skin on skin, heat sewing them together, searing the moment into their flesh and their memory, and a choked “gun’s goin’ _off_ " from Calum before it's over and done with, Ashton tucking himself back into his pants, Calum doing the same through shaky movements before they’re laying back down on the bedroll, down and out into sleep. 

The next morning, when the sky is orange, Ashton wakes up to a headache, taking all his energy to crawl out of the now empty tent, peering out into the daylight where Calum is cooking them up some breakfast. 

Upon sight of Ashton, he grins—and it’s not a forced one or a nervous one, it’s just a smile—and says, “mornin’ cowboy.” 

Ashton blearily honks a good morning back through a scratchy throat, making his way out of the tent. 

His fly is undone from the previous night; he pulls it back up and, as if noticing it, Calum declares, “last night was fun.” 

Ashton eyes him. “Mhm.” 

He waits a beat while Calum stirs their eggs around. 

Ashton says, flitting his eyes past Calum to the horses that are roped up to a tree, “I’m not queer.” 

Calum agrees easily into the morning air, “oh, me neither. Don’t mean it wasn’t fun though.”

And he’s got a point. It _was_ fun. 

“You ever done that before?” Calum asks, glancing over his shoulder at Ashton and Ashton shifts from foot to other foot, avoiding eye contact with those black eyes. The same ones he now knows Calum squints shut when he comes. 

He answers, “no” because he hasn’t.

Calum collects the information with a nod, taking the eggs off the fire. “Damn. Woulda had me fooled. Acted like you knew what you were doing.”

Ashton feels blood warm his cheeks. He snorts, saying, “well it isn’t exactly like you need a manual or a ‘how-to’ book on it. A fuck is a fuck.”

Calum is smiling to himself like he knows something Ashton doesn’t. “Uh-huh. One-shot thing though, right?”

“No one’s business but ours,” Ashton replies. 

There’s some silence between the pair as Calum serves them up breakfast, and he’s got this irritating smile on his face through it all that Ashton can’t stop tracing, which makes his cheeks rounder and his eyes squint and reminds Ashton of the way he whimpers before he asks for more. 

They eat for a couple seconds. Calum is watching him. 

He finally says, like it’s a fact, “will happen again though.”

And Ashton doesn’t agree with that out loud, but they both know it will. 

Because of course it does, sheep be damned, and Ashton finds himself and Calum clambering into the tent together every time the sun sets, and he revels in the moments he can make Calum gasp, and holds them only just below those moments he can make Calum laugh. 

For a while, it only happens at night, when they fall into the tent together, shucking clothes off at record speed, Calum chuckling while half out of breath, hand knotted in the back of Ashton’s hair, joking that, oh, he must be desperate for something. 

Ashton never answers but he is. He’s so fucking desperate and he can’t even explain why.

It’s just something about Calum’s warm smooth skin beneath him, something about how Calum’s laughter is high and disbelieving every time Ashton kisses him, every time Ashton lays him on his back on the floor of the tent. 

Something about the way Calum squints his eyes and gasps with his mouth curved into a smile, telling Ashton after that it’s good, it’s just right, the way he touches him. That it’s got to be a lie, surely he’s done this before, because he knows _exactly_ what he’s doing.

Something about the way Calum smiles through kisses makes Ashton more desperate than he ever thought he could be for something. 

But soon, he’s too desperate to even wait for night, and he’ll catch Calum off guard when he’s washing dishes in the river at sun-up, or when he’s cooking lunch, or when he’s just sitting and talking about nothing, the way his eyes squint being invitation enough. 

Feels like any moment that he isn’t kissing Calum, touching him, sinking into him, is a moment wasted. 

It’s one day, as Calum is buttoning up his jeans, a cigarette balanced between his teeth, that he says, “y’know I don’t mind this.”

“Don’t mind what?” Ashton wonders, walking over to him to pluck the cigarette from Calum’s mouth and bring it to his own. 

“This.” Calum gestures a hand between them. “Us. Don’t think it’s half bad.”

Ashton snorts, puffing smoke from his nostrils. “Didn’t think that was up for debate. I was under the impression not ten minutes ago that you thought it was better than half bad.”

Calum shakes his head, chuckling, and when Ashton uses his own hand to put the cigarette into Calum’s mouth, Calum puffs the smoke and Ashton uses the excuse of their close proximity to graze his thumb over Calum’s jawbone.

“I’m not just talking about the fucking,” Calum says as Ashton withdraws and Ashton frowns, smoking the cigarette down himself. 

“Then what’re you talking about?” he asks.

Calum laughs, diverting his attention to the rest of camp and the way that his horse is stomping its hooves on the ground, growing restless. He says, “I’m talking about _us_. I mean, I like you.”

Ashton doesn’t get it. “I like you too, Cal. Felt that was understood.”

He draws a hand to Calum’s side, fondly tucking his pocket back in which had gotten turned inside out, smiling when Calum takes a sharp breath as Ashton’s fingers graze him. 

“What’re you gonna do after this?” Calum asks. “In a couple months when we leave?”

Ashton shrugs. He hasn’t given it much thought in honesty, because he’s been so preoccupied with Calum and the way eyes squint and the way his body bends. 

He answers, “trying to get something on a ranch. You?”

“Well, if the draft doesn't get to me, I was thinking about going to my dad’s place; he could always use the help.” Calum adjusts his hands in his pockets. “Y’know that old farm could really use some love.”

“I bet,” Ashton returns mutely, huffing out a cloud of grey before he passes the cigarette over to Calum. 

Calum says thoughtfully as he accepts it into his mouth, “we could go down there together; Dad’s got a little farmhouse that could fit two people. Could really whip that old farm into shape, make it our own. Have horses and cows, and we could get chickens and a couple dogs. Wouldn’t be too bad a thing.”

Ashton laughs, smile creating grooves in his cheeks as he takes the cigarette back and it’s only a couple seconds before he realizes that Calum isn’t smiling and Ashton’s laughter fizzles out. He pauses and says, “you’re joking, aren’t you?”

Calum shakes his head and Ashton feels his body stiffen. 

“Uh—” he forces a sound from the back of his throat— “What? Move in together? You talkin’ about living together?”

“Yeah.” Calum’s smile carefully returns and he sounds hopeful. “I think it’d be good. Do like we’re doing now but better. Waking up together, cook breakfast, work, and get a good fuck in before lights out. Nothing different than we’ve been doing.”

“Hell yeah it is,” Ashton replies and he feels the shock radiating from him. “That’s a whole other thing. Two men shacking up? C’mon, Cal, that ain’t natural.”

Instantly, Calum’s expression shifts, hints towards anger which is rare with him, and he snaps, voice taut like a pulled rubber band, “Lot of people would say what we’re doing here in this camp isn't natural either. Hell of a lot.”

“This is no one’s business but ours,” Ashton snaps. 

Calum scoffs hard in his throat and he turns away from Ashton, brow creased, and his jaw clenched tight enough that Ashton can see it in his cheek, and the vein in his neck. 

Ashton doesn’t like seeing him upset, and he really never has before because Calum is a smiley guy, who talks about smiley sorts of things so to see him grimace feels a crime, and Ashton wants to make him happy again. 

“Listen, Cal,” he tries, reaching a hand out which Calum ignores. “I’m not trying to upset you by any means, I just want you to be practical.”

Calum’s jaw unclenches and he sways a bit on his feet because he knows, or he should know, that Ashton is right. 

Ashton carries on to say, “I’m not gonna say that’d be a bad thing; I’m not. I like you loads, Cal, and I—Hell, I wouldn’t be fucking around with you twice a day if I didn’t. Obviously we’ve got something here but I don’t wanna be one of those guys you see around town.”

Calum looks back at him. Those big black eyes that the sun is hitting to make them pecan colored, and sweet. He looks less angry now, more sad. 

“And I don’t want to be dead,” Ashton adds and that makes Calum’s shoulders slump. “There was these two guys near my house that ranched together—Lord knows their names—and my dad would say shit about them. Back before he ran out. And they were tough old bastards, real good men, and, still, they were a joke. No one took ‘em serious. And I was six and they found one of them dead in an irrigation ditch.”

Calum is toying his full bottom lip between his teeth, squinting against the sun. 

“They’d taken a tire iron on him,” Ashton recalls, “and they drug him around by his dick until it pulled off. It destroyed him, tore his goddamn skin off from skidding on gravel. I don’t want that. I want to live.”

Calum swallows. “You saw it?”

“My dad made sure I did,” Ashton returns. “The way he acted… hell, he could have been the one who’d done it.”

Calum’s eyes widen and the sun hits more of them, that black fading to brown and gold, and Ashton thinks he’s really a good looking guy. Finds himself entertaining the idea of a tiny farm together, cow and calf operation, with chickens to spare, and a real kitchen that they can cook more than beans in. One bed, shacked up like how married folks do, spending their off moments with their hands all over one another beneath proper covers on a proper mattress.

But that’s daydream talk. 

“You’re right,” Calum agrees eventually. “Don’t want to do it, not that way at least. Guess I’ll hold out for a bull to kill me. Or the war. Which would you prefer?”

Again, Ashton chooses to say he wouldn’t want to die at all. 

“You got no sense of imagination,” Calum says. 

But sure he does. He’s going to spend the rest of his nights on this camp imagining Calum’s skin against his in a tiny farmhouse, reading books in bed, and riding horses among other things. 

They soon return to how they were before that conversation and Calum no longer mentions an alternate little life on a ranch. But now it’s all that Ashton can think about. 

As he’s holding Calum’s hips against a cold mat in a tent, he imagines pressing him against a warm mattress, trailing kisses down his spine slow and easy unlike the rushed, frantic bites he currently marks Calum’s shoulders with. 

Wishes he could find a way to be less desperate, but when he knows time is running short, there’s nothing else he can be. 

In August, there’s a proper storm that rolls through, making the tent shake and the horses buck, and Ashton stays awake inside the tent with him, watching Calum’s eyes trace the tent’s moving and flapping sides. 

“You scared of storms?” Ashton asks, and they are practically sitting on top of another, Calum with one of his legs hooked over Ashton’s as they sit together. Ashton has his shirt off and his pants are unzipped. Calum is holding a jacket around his shoulders. 

“No,” Calum snips but the anxious look in his eyes gives him away. 

Ashton smiles at him fondly, opening his arm and bobbing his head. “C’mere, you pussy.”

“I am not—” Calum starts to argue when there’s a crack of lightning and he jumps in his skin, quick to press himself into Ashton’s side and Ashton laughs, grinning to himself as he wraps his arms around Calum’s torso to hold him close. 

Without thinking too much about it’s implications, Ashton drops a kiss to the top of Calum’s head and holds it there some while, lips against the mop of curls. He hushes quietly into his hair that it’ll be fine, and the storm will fade, and Calum should just try and fall asleep. 

Which he does, nestled into Ashton’s side with Ashton’s arms around him and his lips against his hair and Ashton wonders how anything else in the world could feel this right. 

With the storm, and with no one to guide them, the sheep ramble off to the west and get mixed up among another herd in another allotment. It’s a miserable next five days as Ashton and the herder who owns the other sheep, who doesn’t speak a lick of english, try to sort through the two packs. 

The paint brands on their woolen sides are worn and faint this late in the season and even when Ashton has finally decided his count is right, he knows deep down that the sheep are mixed. 

Everything here is mixed.

When he comes back, Calum teases him for fucking up and asks if he’s really sure he knows how to count at all and Ashton isn’t in the mood so their playful banter soon turns into an argument where Calum bares his teeth and shouts at Ashton that they don’t have but so much time left and Ashton just wasted five days of it counting sheep. 

Then the argument turns into a hateful sort of kiss where Ashton promises that they’ve got plenty of time, even though they don’t, and the kiss turns into Calum bent over the log they eat supper at, gasping and panting, asking for more which Ashton gives him. 

It’s not even the end of the next week when Joe Aguirre sends word to bring them back down early because there is another much larger storm moving its way in from the Pacific, so it cuts off the next three weeks they thought they were going to have together. 

And with few words they pack up their horses and the mules and move off the mountain with their sheep, hooves skittering on a sloped mountain with pebbles and stones rolling with them, the smell of snow in the air and a rough wind whipping their hair from their faces. 

As they make their way down the slope, Ashton starts to get a cramp in his stomach that can’t be fixed by any medicine he knows how, so he rests a hand against his shirt and holds it there. 

As they’re riding down, Calum asks, “you think Aguirre will be mad or happy we’re coming back with more sheep than we left with? I think, really, he should pay us for the extra animals.”

He laughs to himself and Ashton laughs with him, and those few moments when Calum is smiling, Ashton’s stomach stops hurting. But the moment silence falls, it is back, stronger than before. 

They think they’ve gotten away with it when Joe Aguirre pays them, like maybe he hasn’t noticed, until they have already pocketed their money, the sheep in the pen, and Aguirre says, “some of those sheep never went up there with you.”

Calum offers a hesitant laugh and says, “but now you’ve got extra sheep. You’re welcome.”

The man doesn’t laugh and Calum and Ashton exit the trailer office with their hands in their pockets, awkwardly trading looks with one another as they do so. 

They get to the parking lot and Ashton rests his hand on the side of his rearview mirror, watching as Calum makes his way to his own truck. 

Calum asks him, “think you’re gonna do this next year?”

Ashton shakes his head. “No. My mom is getting re-married in December so I’m gonna stick around to be with the family. This was just a one-off thing.”

“Yeah.” Calum nods along. “Me too. I mean, my mom isn’t getting married but, I’m not coming back either. I’m gonna go into the rodeo. I got big plans.”

“Right,” Ashton agrees and they stand there in the parking lot a few feet apart, staring at one another, unsure what exactly to do next. 

The wind is pushing hard against them and Calum has already raised one leg into his pickup. 

Ashton says, “See you around then. I guess.”

Calum tips his hat and that’s all he does before he gets in his truck and starts it up, pulling away and into the wind. 

Ashton watches it go a few hundred feet before he gets in his own car and drives in the opposite direction. 

He only makes it about a quarter of a mile before his nausea gets so bad that he has to pull over, stumbling out of his truck and dry heaving onto the grassy side of the road. Nothing comes up. He knows it’s not the sort of sick a doctor can cure and he hopes beyond hope that the feeling will wear off or fade over time. 

But it probably won’t when Calum’s laugh is the only medicine for this ache and Calum is long gone. 

For the next couple of years, the pain lessons considerably and Ashton works about a hundred different jobs in that time, never settling down for too long. 

He tries once to get a job from Joe Aguirre, who regards him for a long time in that old trailer office, Ashton standing before him and holding his hat to his chest before the old man says, “you two boys found a way to occupy yourselves that summer, huh?”

Ashon doesn’t quite know what he means, so he says, “yeah, sure, played lots of cards.”

“I ain’t talking about cards,” Aguirre says harshly and Ashton catches sight of the 10x42 binoculars hanging on his wall. He feels himself go a little pale, the palms of his hands going clammy and he apologizes for ever bothering Aguirre in the first place. 

The second summer since Brokeback Mountain comes on and, in June of that year, Ashton gets a general delivery letter from Calum Hood, the first sign of life in all that time and holding the letter between his fingers makes Ashton just as sick to his stomach as it did to leave him. 

_Ash, this letter is long overdue, don’t I know. But I heard you were in Riverton from a couple friends of mine and I’m coming thru on the 24th so I thought I’d stop and buy you a beer. Let me know if you’re still waiting up on me._

The return address was Childress, Texas. 

Ashton wrote back with a trembling hand, _I’m waiting_ , with his Riverton address attached.

On the 24th, Ashton can’t stop himself from moving, shaking all over, and pacing back and forth through the house the entire time. He’s living on his mother and her new husband’s land, and they’re good people but they’re upset with him for not having married some pretty little girl yet and moving away. 

But he helps on the farm and they need him, whether they know it or not.

Besides, Ashton isn’t looking to marry anyone. 

The air is warm and Ashton has about given up hope when he hears the shifting of gravel in the driveway and he is up and out of the house in a matter of seconds, jogging outside to see Calum’s old truck, the same one he drove to Aguirre’s trailer office, pulling into his lot, and he’s smiling so big now that he swears his face is going to split. 

Calum gets out of the car, the same eye squinting smile he used to have on his face, hat balanced on the same black curls, and boots making their way over the dirt. 

“Goddammit,” Calum says as a greeting when they get to one another, and he looks Ashton over, repeating, “Goddammit.”

Ashton embraces him tight, their arms wrapping around each other and squeezing and it’s a practiced action, one that doesn’t need thought, when their mouths join and they kiss in the lot, holding onto each other, hands gripping and clawing and mouths pressing and fraught. 

Calum’s hat falls to the ground and the first button of Ashton’s favorite shirt pops off when Calum grips him by the collar, and all Ashton can smell and taste is Calum and all those nights two years ago. 

“Goddammit,” Calum repeats when they split apart, chests heaving, sending nervous looks around to see if anyone on the farm had noticed the display. Ashton had been so caught up in the moment, he hadn’t even checked. But no one is around and he breathes in relief, smile playing on his face. 

“Here,” he says, gripping onto Calum’s shoulder, scared of letting him go. “Let’s go see about that beer, huh?”

They do see about that beer, getting themselves a six pack from the convenient store nearby, Ashton having left a note with his mom and her husband saying that he won’t be back until late because when Calum and he get to talking and all, it’s in for a long night. 

It takes them about twenty minutes after having bought the beers to wind up in room 304 of the nearest motel and to get the headboard smacking against the wall, Ashton having to hold a hand over Calum’s mouth to keep the room next over from hearing. 

They lay together on the bed, breathing deep, Calum with a cigarette hanging off his lips and smiling as he blows smoke into the room, everything smelling like ash and alcohol and sweat. 

“Goddammit,” Calum finally says, out of breath and happy, and he says, “you been practicing while I was gone? You say ‘no’ I’m not gonna believe you.”

“I haven’t,” Ashton says and it’s the honest truth. 

“God, you act all innocent, don’t you?” Calum turns his head to look at him and his smile is so broad that it convinces Ashton to smile too and Calum takes the cigarette from his own mouth to put it into Ashton’s. “Got that sweet little look in your eyes, and maybe it’s got everyone else fooled, but I know. I know the truth.”

He’s the only one that does. 

“Y’know I didn’t think when I came that we were going to get into this,” Calum says and when Ashton gives him a pointed look, he laughs, turning to the ceiling with a shrug. “Okay, yeah, I knew. Or, least, I was hoping anyway. God, was I hoping. I swear I broke the speed limit getting here, just imagining you on me.”

Ashton takes in a breath. “I didn’t know what the hell’d happened to you.”

“I was in the rodeo,” Calum answers. “Wasn’t near as fun as I thought it was gonna be though. Broke my leg, no fun in that. Laid up for months, lost a shit ton of money, and for what? Just to say I broke my leg.”

Ashton smiles at him, his knuckles gently rubbing along Calum’s side, feeling his soft stomach beneath his hand. “So the war didn’t get you? That’s always what I imagined.”

“After bull riding,” Calum answers, “they haven’t got any use for me. I’m broke in twenty different places. Put me in a uniform, I may just crumble apart like a stone. Damn ridiculous.”

He takes Ashton by the wrist and moves his hand to Calum’s mouth so he can take a hit of the cigarette between his fingers. 

“Ash,” he says around smoke, “we have got ourselves a goddamn situation, don’t we?”

“Do we?”

Calum raises a brow. “You want this to happen again, don’t you? Well, I ain’t married and you aren’t either. I’m thinking—”

“I’m not gonna live with you,” Ashton says and while it burns in his gut to say it, he knows it’s what he has to say. “I gotta stay here on the ranch, family needs me.”

“Right, right.” Calum nods. “And I got a job lined up too, I just uh… I want it to happen again.”

He glances up at Ashton with hopeful, big brown eyes and Ashton can’t resist the urge to lean over and kiss him on the mouth, slower than they usually would, opening Calum up and mixing their breath together, his hand moving down Calum’s side to slip beneath the covers and stroke him. 

Calum sighs into his mouth and he says, “it has to happen again.”

“It will,” Ashton promises his lips, and it definitely will because Ashton’s getting to the point where he doesn’t think he can live without it. He kisses him again and lets out a pained breath. “I can’t believe you’re gonna drive away come morning and I’m gonna have to, what? Go back to work? Act like I’m normal?”

Calum smiles softly at him. “Funny way of saying you’re gonna miss me.”

“Of course I’m gonna miss you,” Ashton says, mouthing at his jaw. “Spent the last two years missing you.”

Calum tilts his head back against the pillow, letting out a groan and he reaches a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Why do you gotta say stuff like that? Like this isn’t already hard enough.”

Ashton laughs, drawing his hands away from Calum and sitting up. “Sorry. Just saying what I think. Does this happen to other people? What do they do? What are we supposed to do?”

Calum sits up in the bed, bracing himself with his hands behind his back and he says, “doesn’t happen where I’m from and if it does, they hide it good. And honestly, I couldn’t give a shit about other people and what they do and what they don’t. For fuck’s sake, Ash, take a few days off. Quit your job, I don’t give a fuck. Let’s get out of here. Put your stuff in my truck and let's go to the mountains for a couple of days, just us. Just like it was.”

Ashton loses his breath for a few moments before he finally gets a hold of himself and he nearly trips over himself to grab the motel phone and dial his own number. 

They drive up to Brokeback the next morning, listening to the radio too loud with their windows rolled down and laughing together, and anyone could probably see two men in the car together singing along and having a friendly old time, but what you can’t see through the window is Ashton’s hand on the inside of Calum’s thigh, tracing the inseam of his jeans with a finger while he’s driving.

“We could go up here a couple times a year,” Calum proposes as they set up camp, “you and me and say it’s a hunting trip or a fishing trip or, fuck, a goddamn hiking trip and no one would be the wiser. Just you and me and long goddamn nights, Ash.”

Ashton abandons his work on the fire to grab Calum by both sides of his face and kiss him, long and hard, fighting a smile and he loves how Calum melts beneath his touch. 

“C’mon,” he says, hooking his finger into Calum’s belt loop to drag him towards the tent. “C’mon, get in the goddamn tent.”

Calum laughs but doesn’t protest and within a minute they’re on the bedroll, mouths together and skin touching, Ashton reveling in the way Calum’s body feels beneath him. 

They spend the next few days like that, on top of one another. 

At one point, they go to the river under the guise of fishing and catching some trouts for dinner but their lines never so much as touch the water as they instead abandon them on the bank and strip down to nothing, wading into the cool water themselves. 

They splash water onto one another and Ashton sees how many times and how many different ways he can make Calum laugh, standing in murky water up to their waists, legs bumping beneath the rippling surface.

Ashton holds onto Calum’s forearm, baring his fingers into the soft skin there and he grins, saying, “You are unreal, y’know that?”

Calum pretends to think a second before he returns, “Yeah, I do know that.” 

Ashton shoves him in the chest to make him fall back into the water, laughing loudly, and Ashton says, “you’re a goddamn bitch too.”

“Also something I’m aware of,” Calum returns as he stands up again and this time, instead of pushing him away, Ashton tugs him closer and bare skin bumps below and above the water’s surface. 

Ashton tilts his head to the side and kisses him, slow and drawn out, eyes slipping shut and breathing through his nose. 

When they part, noses together, Calum says, “you’re pretty unreal yourself.”

And that’s how the next days go, passing compliments and insults with the same amount of fondness between the pair, kissing wherever they can like it’s casual occurrence, Ashton running his hand over Calum’s back when he makes dinner, kissing the top of his head when he returns from a supply run, chuckling and grinning dumbly every time he convinces Calum into bed with him even though it never needs convincing. 

When they leave the mountain that coming Monday, Ashton feels like he’s losing something and his chest hurts worse than his stomach did that first time when Calum drives away. 

But, there is a type of hope that wasn’t there previously, because now he knows that it isn’t the last time, and he will be seeing Calum again someday down the road. 

Which he does. 

They send each other letters when something of note happens, just a short few sentences every couple of months to make sure their plans are still set and that Calum is still coming down for the weekend. In one of his letters, Calum mentions there’s a girl that’s been hanging around him and everyone expects the two of them to get married. 

All the other letters he keeps, but that one Ashton throws away. 

For the next few years, they trace their way through the mountains every five or so months, hiding away from the world and all their responsibilities for six, seven days at a time. Ashton’s job always gives him a hard time when he gets back but it’s a small price to pay for Calum’s laughter.

They tell each other stories of home, stories of what they do when they’re not with each other which are always boring stories and after a couple of runaway weekends they stop talking about what they’ve been up to in the past and instead make up plans for the future. 

Calum’s still got it in his head that living together is something they can do. And while Ashton shoots him down every time, he doesn’t mind the pictures Calum paints in his head of a little red farmhouse for just the two of them, hens pecking at the ground at their feet, and Calum makes the same joke about Ashton liking cocks instead of chicks every damn time and still Ashton laughs. 

He talks about having horses they can ride around their property together, of dogs that they can go duck hunting with, of a garden in their backyard wrought with flowers and vegetables. 

Ashton knows that Calum is a bit of a romantic, to an extent, and there’s a sprig of guilt that sprouts in his chest that Calum is wasting romantic plans on him. Plans that will never come to fruition that he should be using on some girl.

Calum deserves to get married, to have kids, to live long and happy on that farm in his dreams and if Ashton were a good man he would put a stop to this, tell him he can’t do it anymore and that Calum ought to get as far away from him as possible. 

But he’s so goddamn selfish, and he wants Calum all to himself. Wants those daydreams and Calum’s laugh and squinting brown eyes, and smooth skin for _him_.

And it’s that goddamn eating selfishness and guilt at that selfishness that makes Ashton admit to Calum while they’re packing up to leave that he probably can’t make it to their getaways until November this year. 

Calum stops, holding onto the door of his car and he asks, clipped, “What? November? What the hell happened to August?”

Ashton feels his gut twist, and he tries, “listen, I’m real sorry, Cal, but I can’t make it any sooner. August isn’t an option anymore.”

Calum looks like he’s trying not to show too much anger; it isn’t like him. He takes a step away from his car and towards Ashton. “You said we’d have nine days. More time than we've ever had. Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“Didn’t wanna ruin the week,” Ashton says. 

“You mean you were worried I wouldn’t let you fuck me if you admited to it,” Calum snaps and Ashton blinks in surprise. 

“What?” he asks.

“For fuck’s sake—” Calum turns around with a hard scoff, hands on hips— “We should do something different. Maybe we should go to Mexico.”

“Mexico?” Ashton blinks. “I don’t want to go to—What? C’mon, don’t throw a bitch fit, Cal, I’m just putting it off for a couple months and then we’ll be back. I don’t want to either. I mean sometimes—fuck, Cal, sometimes I miss you so much I can’t hardly stand it.”

That catches Calum’s attention and he glances at Ashton, some of the anger drooling from him but the irritation stays, hot in his eyes. He raises a finger. “You know, Ash, this is a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation.”

“Well what d’you expect me to do about that?” Ashton throws his hands up. “Isn’t like I’ve got a choice. I’ve got a job, you’ve got a job. We can’t just up and leave together at any given moment. We got family too. Hell, I’m broke half the goddamn time, I can’t just run away with you. Why’d you forget that? D’you have a better idea?”

Calum scoffs bitterly. “I said I did. You know I did.”

Ashton senses the tone, the rage that is bubbling beneath the surface and he scowls, taking a step towards Calum, balling his fists up. “Don’t you try and pull that shit on me. I told you, I want that. But I know it’s something neither of us can have. Be reasonable. Use your goddamn head for once in your stupid life.”

“I’ll say this one goddamn time—” Calum turns on him— “We could have had a good life together, Ashton. A fucking real good life if you had let us. This is on you. Not on me. You wouldn’t do it. So you know what we got, Ash? Brokeback Mountain. And that’s _all_ we’ve got. I can count on my hands the time we’ve been together in the last goddamn decade. I’m not like you, okay? This means more to me, and I don’t give a goddamn fuck if you think that makes me a faggot, or whatever the hell else you think. Fuck you, Ashton, you hear me? Fuck _you_.”

“I did,” Ashton bites, “Y’know what? I did. So don’t go blaming me. You’re the fucking one who invited me in the tent; you’re the one who wrote the first letter. You can’t blame shit on me! That’s on you!”

Calum is looking at Ashton differently now, and Ashton doesn’t really know what has changed but he tastes salt on his own wet lips and the world is blurring at the corners enough for him to have to wipe his eyes.

In a soft voice, Calum says, “Ash—”

He reaches out and Ashton tugs away from him, snarling. “Don’t you fucking touch me. That’s what got us into all this. You. You fucking ruined me.”

Calum doesn’t seem hurt by the words and Ashton doesn’t know what’s happened but they’re sitting on the dirty ground and Calum has his arms around Ashton’s shoulders, hugging him to his chest, and he is humming into dirty blonde hair, “shut up, you dumb bastard. Shut up and let me hold you.”

Ashton does, and he regrets it; how much he wants to stay there in Calum’s warm embrace forever. How he doesn’t feel like he needs to know anything else but the smell of Calum’s jacket, all smoke and sweat and dirt.

There’s words unspoken between them but they both know what they are and Ashton knows they both want to say them, but they don’t, and they leave each other soon after, Calum with a tired kiss to Ashton’s hairline and a huffed, “I’ll see you in November. You fucker.”

Ashton doesn’t say goodbye before he drives away. And that’s that. 

He doesn’t know about the accident for several months. Not until he sends a letter to Calum about their plans for November that is returned with a [DECEASED] stamp.

He doesn’t believe it, really. Figures it’s a mistake. So he calls the number in Childress that Calum gave him, and some young woman picks up who Ashton soon finds out is Calum’s sister. She asks who he is and he says he is Ashton Irwin, one of Calum’s old fishing buddies. 

She says, “oh, yeah. He talked about you.”

Ashton wants to ask what he said but instead he replies, “my letter I sent him a few weeks ago got returned to me. Did his address change or—”

But she tells him no, that’s not the case, and the entire time she’s speaking Ashton feels a black, hot void open up in his stomach, gaping and sucking, and he can’t do much but listen as she explains in a level voice that Calum was pumping up a flat on the truck out on a back road when the tire of it blew up and it exploded, hitting him in the face. Broke his nose and jaw and knocked him unconscious on his back. By the time someone came along he had drowned in his own blood.

But Ashton knows the truth. That someone got him with a tire iron. 

“I would have let you know,” she tells him, “but I didn’t know your address, Calum never said.”

Ashton chokes, “is he buried down there?”

She answers, “he was cremated. Said he wanted his ashes spread on someplace called Brokeback Mountain but I’ve never heard of it. His ashes are up with our parents. I thought maybe Brokeback Mountain was around here but… I don’t know. Knowing Calum, it’s not a real place at all. Some daydream with whiskey springs and singing bluebirds.”

Ashton can’t think enough to speak right. “We herded sheep on Brokeback one summer. Are, uh, your folks still at Lightning Flat?”

“Yeah,” she says, “if you want to go, I’m sure they’d want his wishes carried out.”

And so, after Ashton hangs up and punches the wall next to him so hard it bloodies his knuckles, he drives to Lightning Flat. 

He feels nauseous the entire time, but a different sort than when he left Brokeback for the first time. This sort of nausea is deadly, and it’s tearing, and Ashton wants to dig into his stomach and take his intestines out, dump them off on the side of the road with his heart, and disappear into oblivion. 

It’s never hurt this bad before. 

He ends up at the Hood’s kitchen table with Calum’s parents and Calum’s mother keeps offering to make him something to eat but Ashton simply isn’t hungry. 

He clears his throat and says, “I feel terrible about, uh, Calum. I’ve known him for a long time now. And I came by to tell you that I’m more than willing to take his ashes up to Brokeback Mountain like he wanted.”

Calum’s father scoffs and shakes his head. “I know where the damn mountain is. Boy thought he was too good or some shit to be buried in the family plot. Y’know he talked about you too? Said you two were gonna come and fix my farm up, like it needed fixing.”

Ashton stares up at him, the abyss in his stomach opening up deeper still.

“Used a say, ‘Ashton Irwin,’ he used to say, ‘I’m goin a bring him up here one a these days and we’ll lick this damn ranch into shape.’ He had some half-baked idea the two of you was goin’ to move up here, build a log cabin and help me run this ranch and bring it up.” He shakes his head with a hard laugh that lacks any sort of humor. “But like most of his ideas, never came to pass. Just talk. All he’s ever been is talk.”

Ashton starts to say something, tongue thick in his mouth but Calum’s mother speaks before him, saying, “kept his room the same as before he left. Always thought he was going to come back, y’know? You can go up there if you like.”

“I would.” Ashton swallows. “I would like that very much, thank you.”

So he goes up the stairs to this old room, with a single bed and some photos on the wall, and he treads over the floorboards, listening to them creak, and thinking to himself that he’s got no right being here. It isn’t his home. 

Downstairs, he can make out the sound of Calum’s mother boiling water in the kettle and the old man mumbling something but he tunes them out. 

He tries to imagine Calum in this room, all smiles that make squinted eyes and he tries to hear an echo of laughter but it’s just empty. 

He walks to the closet, all of Calum’s old clothes hung up and he runs his hands over the sleeves of the shirts, pausing as he lands on one shirt and he frowns, confused, gently pulling the collar of it open to reveal another shirt tucked within it. 

One of his own, worked into the sleeves and hidden away. 

He takes a shuddering breath, pulling the shirt from the closet and he holds it to his chest, putting his nose against the fabric and inhaling deep, hoping for so much of a memory of Calum’s smell. Of his touch but it’s nothing. 

It’s empty and only fabric and Ashton feels like he’s going to break apart now, crumble to the earth in so many pieces, shatter from the inside out and so he hangs the shirt back up and stumbles away and back down the stairs because he needs to be out of the house, away from the lack of memory. 

In the end, Calum’s father refuses to hand over the ashes, saying that they’ve got a family plot and Calum’s going in it because he’s not above their family. 

It takes everything Ashton has not to lay waste to him, to sock him in the jaw, dig his eyes out, to kill him if he had to. But he forces a smile and says it’s alright. All of it is alright. 

And he leaves, truck bumping down the road back home. The gravel blurs for a while, the trees into misshapen forms of green and brown, the road just one stretch of grey, on and on, forever.

A few weeks later, when the emptiness still fills him, he purchases himself a thirty-cent postcard of Brokeback Mountain and pins it to his wall in his own closet, the closest thing to proof he’ll ever have that it happened. 

That’s perhaps the worst part. That he doesn’t have proof. That he doesn’t have anything but hollow memories that fade further everyday, the sound of Calum’s laugh slowly draining from his brain and it kills him, tears at him, that he can’t remember it sound for sound. 

Around the time he buys the postcard, his dreams try to resuscitate the memories in his brain, try to bring them back to him in some way, albeit hazy. 

It comes in the form of Calum as he first met him, with his broad smile and squinted eyes, that first summer with the sheep. He dreams of the mountain, their moments together when he made Calum laugh and their mouths sharing warmth and their bodies sharing heat. 

And he dreams of a night when a thunderstorm rocked their tent and Calum fell asleep in his arms like they were lovers, proper lovers. 

When he wakes, he’s always in different sorts, sometimes smiling, joy and pleasure rippling in his gut. Sometimes in grief and trembling with the knowing he can’t get things he wants back. Sometimes his pillow wet, sometimes his sheets. 

He doesn’t know much what to do about it. How to fix what’s so broken in his gut. How to sneak into his dreams and stay there with Calum on the campsite, in each other’s skin, in the warm glow of his voice and his smile.

But he can’t do anything save for keep on living, and if he can’t fix it, he’s got to learn how to stand it. 

So he goes camping alone during the summers where there used to be two bodies instead of one, and he hears an echo of Calum’s laugh in the gusting wind, and tries to convince himself he can learn to live with an empty gut.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr](https://daydadahlias.tumblr.com/).


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